1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to communication systems, and more particularly, to specialized communications systems for use in reviewing invoices and then resolving disputes concerning those invoices.
2. Description of Related Art
In-room video checkout systems offered by many hotels permit a guest to view his bill and authorize payment. However, these systems provide no way to easily resolve billing disputes except by visiting the cashier.
Some hotels prepare a final bill during the night before a quest's departure and slip it under the door. If there is a problem with the pre-printed bill prepared during the night, such as an error or omission, the guest is faced with having to wait in line to speak with a cashier to resolve it. As the cashier and the guest attempt to solve the problem there are many opportunities for miscommunication between them: while the guest is looking at a paper copy of the bill, the cashier is typically looking at a computer screen which has formatted the bill information differently, so substantial verbal effort may be required to, in effect, map the format seen by the guest to the format seen by the cashier so that each knows what the other is talking about.
Guests checking out of hotels often face a dilemma. Should they skip breakfast so that they can check out quickly using the pre-printed bill slipped under the door during the night or should they eat breakfast and then have to go through the entire bill preparation process again? A guest may opt to skip having breakfast at the hotel to avoid spending time at the cashier's counter as the bill is prepared again. Not only has the traveler skipped a meal, but the hotel has missed an opportunity to generate revenue due to the loss of a restaurant customer.
Touch screens, where human/machine interaction is achieved by literally touching a desired icon or portion of the screen, are extremely easy to use and often eliminate the need for any other sort of input device.
Radio or radio telephony, whether digital or analog, eliminate the needs for "hard-wired" connections and enable, individually or simultaneously, two-way voice and data communications.
Collaborative software tools, which allow multiple users to view, annotate, and change documents while interacting with other users, are commercially available. This technology, in conjunction with telecommunication networks, allows users from disparate locations to interact as if they were physically in the same location. Each user's display contains the same information as all the other users' devices. As a result, little of the cognitive dissonance that may occur, for example, during a telephone conference call where one user is trying to describe an object to others does occur. Such collaborative tools are often referred to as groupware.